Calling A Truce with the Media

I am rethinking my own personal relationship with the media. Aha, you did not know that I had a "relationship" with the media. Well I do. Up until now it was an uneasy one, because no matter where I went, no matter where I turned, some form of the media was screaming for my attention. Buy this, want this, come here to this vacation spot, watch this television show, come see this movie, purchase this magazine so that I can have better sex or make more money. I was and am still being bombarded from every angle at every hour of the day.

So why am I calling a truce? Because I no longer take the assault upon my life personally. This is not about me. All these voices coming from everywhere are simply attempts to grab an audience. See me, hear me... pay attention to me. People get paid to create magazines and send out emails... to talk on radio and to create television shows to inform me and to entertain me. And every one of those people who do that are calling out to me to stop for a moment and pay attention to whatever it is they have created. They are trying to sell their "product" to me and get me to become part of their demographic. That is just their job. Okay. I have no problem with that.

Because I no longer take what is happening personally, I can now calmly pick and choose which parts of the media world into which I want to tune and for how long I want to do that. I am simply weighing my priorities and making some choices in this regard. Nothing more than that.

In one of his poems, Robert Frost noted that this country was mostly about buying and selling things. In theory, most of what we do in our lives is focused on one of those two activities. Even when we are trying to get a job, what are we doing? We are trying to sell others on hiring us. Why should the media industry be different than any other industry.

In fact, because it is the nature in a global village to have mass media and mass advertising that reaches out to people in every part of the world, even the smallest business situated in a country a continent away can be out there trying to grab our attention from halfway around the world. Some products and messages are so common as to be found everywhere on this planet. Coca-Cola is one such product. We are not surprised to see Coke ads, whether we are in Venice or in Beijing. Also consider, for examples American blue jeans. Blue jeans are pretty much the fashion icon for young people and old people alike, in every part of the world. So whether it is fashion, entertainment, news or cultural values, all are being reflected in and being altered by the long reach of the media. The media is a force unto itself, now, and with the creation of the internet, the media, in whatever form it takes, is powerful enough a force to be truly feared by totalitarian governments, who go to great lengths to limits it's reach.

I figure that the media moguls are sort of like fisherman. They entice us as best they can with some kind of bait and then throw out a huge net. They then reel it in to see how many people they can catch in that net for that issue or that performance or that episode of their production.

Life is always busy and there are never going to be enough hours in the day. Seems that there is no place I can go to buy additional hours that I can use each day. So I am going to have to make hard choices as to how I am going to use my time. Apparently the ball is in my court. So I will have to get a better grasp of the situation and then become a whole lot more selective with my time and my money when it comes to interacting with world of news and entertainment.

First, it makes little sense for me to get angry, to get upset or to resent the intrusion of the uninvited media into my life. In the modern world of the twenty-first century, that is going to happen, no matter what I do. Media spam is increasingly going to be a factor in my life, whether it takes the form of unwanted emails or the form of unwanted noise from the television set or the radio. Coolly and deliberately, I need to set the limits of how much of this very distracting din I want to let into my life and then impose those limitations on everyone who wants my attention.

Secondly, I will need to find a place somewhere where I can find a respite from all the many tentacles of the sensory intruders. I am not really sure where that will end up being. Maybe the library. Maybe the park. It may be as simple as turning off the television set and putting on a cd of my own choosing... setting the tone and mood of the minute. Hell. Maybe I should just turn off all my electronic and digital playtoys and read a book. Hey, that is a thought. A little retro maybe, but a good thought nevertheless.

Maybe now, I can be more at peace with myself. Having made this decision, maybe my life will become less frantic and nerve-wracking, with fewer heart-wrenching decisions to make... such as whether I should watch Las Vegas on television or Grey's Anatomy.. And maybe I won't feel so guilty as often now, because less and less will I have squandered some precious time indulging myself in some of my more guilty pleasures. If I were really honest with myself, I would admit that some of the things I do to pass the time, though immensely pleasurable, aren't really necessary to my existence.

This process of rethinking my life is really liberating. I am weaning myself out of the habit of always having to have immediate gratification while the television is on or there is a coupon in the newspaper for 30% off everything in the store. I won't be loading myself up with a thousand competing demands on my time and my energy. What I really want is to simplify my life and to make each day just a bit more manageable. With this new take on my personal relationship to the media, I am one step closer to accomplishing that goal.